the intricacies of high life. It has its own peculiarities, its
flutters of excitement, its rounds of pleasures, and distractions of
every kind, aye--it has even its gossip, although the whisperers are
but budding misses with golden or raven locks floating down their
backs.

It is the adolescent stage: where the lisp or drawl, most popular in
the advanced circles, is affected with unquestionable propriety: when
growing girls of susceptible sixteen, or thereabout, are meekly
subjected to a rigid training and instruction by their older and more
sophisticated sisters, when they learn "dauncing" and "tennis" and
"riding," and go to small-and-earlies where a few grown couples are
also invited to amuse them, or rather I should say instruct them.

Quite unconscious of any such prescribed routine being the "thing"
among my family circle, I was almost stupefied by the look of
distracted horror which flashed over my step-mother's face, when, the
week after my arrival, I shocked her sensitive good breeding by a
coarse betrayal of my unpardonable ignorance.

It was a perfect June day, flooded with a bright but not overwarm
sunshine; the young leaves on the maple boughs outside my bed-room
window were swaying gently against the lattice, and below in the
freshly trimmed garden the flowers were unfolding their early beauty
to the summer warmth.

I had sought the safe retreat of my room, that I might, as I had
promised, write long and loving letters to some of my much-regretted
school-friends. When all my preparations were ready, and I had dated
the first of these effusions, I was disturbed by a timid knock at the